1more S31 Open Earbuds in the test – a good choice not just for sports

After the S30, 1more has brought further open earbuds onto the market with the S31. This is intended to address all those who may have problems with in-ear headphones. As with the S30, the S31 do not sit in your ear canal, but are held on your ear with a bracket and are essentially directly in front of it. This has advantages and disadvantages. And is it worth the price of 60 euros?

Box & Accessories: You don’t need to expect much content here. In addition to a small instruction manual, you will find the earbuds themselves in the packaging, which are housed in the charging case. That was it. A USB cable saved me 1 more, which I’m not too sad about given my USB cable collection. Of course, things may look different for you.

Design and processing: The S31 are well and sturdily installed and don’t leave a cheap impression. It’s not absolute premium quality, but very reasonable for the price. The ear hook fits both large and small ears and sits firmly. No matter whether you move around normally in the office or do sports, they don’t slip and stay in place. Likewise, you could almost forget you’re wearing them, they’re so light.

The design also ensures that you can hear ambient noise quite well, which is definitely an advantage when doing sports or going for a walk. Conversely, due to the structure, the people around you are more likely to hear what you are listening to if you do it at a reasonably loud volume.

1more uses 14.2 mm drivers that work in a frequency range of 24 Hz to 24 kHz. The impedance is 16 ohms and Bluetooth 5.3 is used for the connection. Two microphones are also installed per earphone and the S31 are IPX5 certified. They hold up well to rain and sweat and can also be washed off. All advantageous if you want to use them regularly outdoors or during sporting activities.

By the way, the pairing mode is automatically activated when you take the headphones out of the charging case. All you have to do is select it on the device you want to pair it with and you’re connected. Easy as pie. If you were too slow, you can use the button in the charging case to help.

Performance and sound quality: For the price, you shouldn’t expect absolute audio enjoyment like with high-priced devices, but the S31 still deliver very good sound quality for what they want to be. Music from different genres sounds detailed and clean and there are no distortions or other problems even at higher volumes. By default, everything sounds quite neutral, although the bass is inherently emphasized a little more.

If you want, you can switch between different equalizer profiles, including one that reduces the bass slightly. There are four of them, but you can’t create your own profiles, which is a shame. All in all, you can listen to music while doing sports with the S31. Or do that when you’re lounging around on the couch. However, I would rather use a headset.

Of course you can also make phone calls with the S31. As mentioned, there are two microphones per earbud that are equipped with ENC (Environmental Noise Cancellation) and on top of that use an AI algorithm to filter out ambient noise. This works well and reliably, although everything can never be completely filtered out. Normally you are very easy to understand, even if there are better quality options on the market.

The S31 is operated using touch gestures. You can start and pause as well as answer and hang up a call. Longer tapping activates the smartphone’s voice control, and you can make further settings yourself. What’s practical is that you have to tap the earbuds more than once to perform such gestures. This prevents you from accidentally triggering an action if you accidentally touch it, such as when wiping sweat or scratching your ear.

As far as runtime is concerned, depending on the type of use, up to eight hours are possible on one charge. If you make full use of the charging case, you will get a total running time of around 30 hours. Thanks to the quick charge function, you only have to charge the S31 for five minutes to use it for two hours. Practical when things have to go quickly.

Software: Optionally, you can use the 1more app together with the S31. But you don’t necessarily have to in order to basically operate it. You can use the app to change equalizer profiles, make settings (touch gestures) and download firmware updates.

The 1more S31 is available to buy from, among others Amazon.de or directly at 1more.

1more S31 Open Earbuds – Conclusion

I was already quite satisfied with the S30 from 1more and the S31 definitely doesn’t do any worse. For their intended purpose, they deliver very good sound quality, sit well on the ears and also impress with a reasonable price. In fact, there are few real points of criticism. In terms of quality, theoretically there is of course more, but in this price category and with this type of structure there is hardly any reason to complain. If you are looking for good, stable earbuds for sports, this is a good choice.